No LTE for you —

LG explains existence of LTE chip in Nexus 4

Inclusion of LTE chip is really just a two-for-one deal.

LG has officially come forward with an explanation on why it included a 4G LTE chip in the Nexus 4. The official statement, which was originally offered to TechRadar, explains that the LTE chip is included in Google's new stock Android handset because the "powerful chipset is only available with a combined processor and modem and cannot be implemented separately."

The Snapdragon S4, the same chipset featured inside LG's Optimus G handset, is apparently offered as a package deal with the WTR1605L OVV PKK486R1 multiband LTE chip. In an official statement to Ars, LG also confirmed that the modem's LTE capabilities are "only effective when combined with other essential hardware parts, such as a signal amplifier and filter in order for it to work." However, that didn't seem to stop Nexus 4 users in Canada, who managed to gain access to the handset's LTE capabilities with a few software tweaks, though the phones still couldn't offer full-fledged LTE connectivity.

While combining the two into one package makes for a cheaper device, it can be infuriating for the consumer who wants a particular capability but doesn't have access to it. Currently, those who want the Nexus 4 with LTE will have to set aside their dreams and stick with the Optimus G instead, which comes without the added promise of consistent Android software updates from Google.

Here's to hoping LG goes full force with it next time around and introduces a 4G-capable Nexus 4 in the near future.

So does this mean the Americans finally have a legitimate excuse to move to Canada?

You mean other than our great beers, health care and the fact that we have been able to enter Cuba without difficulty for years?! What are you waiting for? Hurry before your "Home of the free" passes some new law and takes that away from you too!

"Infuriating"? Really? People are buying devices that are advertised as *not* LTE, then driven to FURY by the fact that there is a chip inside that could, in theory provide LTE, if it were combined with a few other parts that are *not* inside.

I think people must have a low fury threshold, or, maybe this is hype.

It isn't "free" it is "universal", many Canadians forget that because you don't have to check your wallet to go see a doctor. Canadian universal healthcare consumes roughly 50% of every tax dollar, and is well worth every cent.

According to the graph you posted, the difference for most people in the US is right about 5% (unless you make millions; in which case the difference is quite significant.) I currently pay about 5% of my salary in health insurance premiums, and I make a good amount of money. So free healthcare, while not completely free, is still cheaper than what I've got now.

When I was up in Edmonton I saw newspaper headlines about the government laying off doctors and nurses, lotteries for surgery and a growing shift of Canadians paying for private health insurance on-top of their "free" health care.

There is the fact that my father-in-law (British born but lived in Canada for many years) didn't have the same diagnostic care in Canada and he credited American health care for discovering his brain cancer and prolonging his life.

He did eventually succumb to brain cancer, but I wonder if he was in the US the entire time and had earlier detection if he'd still be alive today. Would I trade free doctor's visits for not getting life saving care? No.

In the US, we don't have "free" health care, though the US government does spend more per capita on health care for its citizens than any nation on Earth, and we have much higher standards here for what we expect.

You can't draw simple apples-to-apples comparisons to other nations on health care.

Can LG explain the lack of expandable storage next? Or do I have to thank Google for pushing everything to the cloud for access while networks tighten down on data usage?

Thank Google.

And Apple. And Amazon. Microsoft getting there.

Funny thing early on the cell carriers promoted smartphones and what apps can do, namely streaming data ones (cloud services, streaming video, music). Now they are tightening that grip more and more as people use voice and SMS less. They are after all offering cheap unlimited voice and text but gouging data.

Why not offer the old unlimited voice plans but instead make it unlimited data?

In the US, we don't have "free" health care, though the US government does spend more per capita on health care for its citizens than any nation on Earth, and we have much higher standards here for what we expect.

"World Health Statistics 2010 identified 33 countries with lower maternal mortality ratios than the United States, while 37 countries had lower neonatal mortality rates, 40 had lower infant mortality rates, 65 had lower low birthweight rates, and 32 had higher rates of exclusive breastfeeding to at least six months. ... Despite the poor international ranking, the International Federation of Health Plans recently reported that average U.S. payments for vaginal birth were far higher than all other countries reported, including Canada, France, and Australia."

Quote:

You can't draw simple apples-to-apples comparisons to other nations on health care.

Very true. Everyone's better at one thing and worse at another. My impression is that the US has the absolute best health care available in the world if you can afford it, but the distribution is highly uneven. Nobody has yet demonstrated a high standard of universal care at a competitive cost.

So, the LTE chip is part of the overall integrated hardware, yet is not being used. Of the four major US carriers, only T-Mobile is HSPA+ 42 capable allowing the phone to reach 4G speeds rivaling LTE. The Nexus 4 on any other carrier will only get 3G speeds (HSPA+ 21 max), excluding Sprint which from my understanding doesn't even have a HSPA+ pipeline.

So why would I consider buying this phone if I was on any other carrier besides T-Mobile? Or is this phone only being offered on T-Mobile and no other carriers?

According to the graph you posted, the difference for most people in the US is right about 5% (unless you make millions; in which case the difference is quite significant.) I currently pay about 5% of my salary in health insurance premiums, and I make a good amount of money. So free healthcare, while not completely free, is still cheaper than what I've got now.

The only graph I see on that page is Tax Revenues as a Percentage of GDP, is there something else I'm missing? I see the table at the bottom that I meant to link directly to, as it's just plain easier to read.

Speaking only of the average wage in the country:Single, childless Canadians pay 31.6% of their gross to the fed. Married with two kids gets you a rate of 21.5%. The numbers for Americans are 29.1% and 11.9% respectively. That's +2.5% and +9.6%, again, respectively.

I just did the math and pay 2.8% of my gross as premiums for me plus my mini-me.

So, the LTE chip is part of the overall integrated hardware, yet is not being used. Of the four major US carriers, only T-Mobile is HSPA+ 42 capable allowing the phone to reach 4G speeds rivaling LTE. The Nexus 4 on any other carrier will only get 3G speeds (HSPA+ 21 max), excluding Sprint which from my understanding doesn't even have a HSPA+ pipeline.

So why would I consider buying this phone if I was on any other carrier besides T-Mobile? Or is this phone only being offered on T-Mobile and no other carriers?

In the US, you would be correct except that the N4 wouldn't work on Sprint as Sprint is not a GSM carrier. The N4 is designed for global use, therefore, it is designed to use the most widely available bands/protocols/etc.; LTE is not one of them. It just so happens that T-Mobile (in the US) decided to forgo LTE and build out their HSPA+ network where AT&T chose to go with LTE. IOW, there is no clandestine effort to push buyers to T-Mobile, it just seems that way.

I just did the math and pay 2.8% of my gross as premiums for me plus my mini-me.

Do you know how much your company is paying for your healthcare? The cost of your healthcare is far higher than the amount deducted from your paycheck. You still pay for it, but you never see those dollars in the first place.

So, the LTE chip is part of the overall integrated hardware, yet is not being used. Of the four major US carriers, only T-Mobile is HSPA+ 42 capable allowing the phone to reach 4G speeds rivaling LTE. The Nexus 4 on any other carrier will only get 3G speeds (HSPA+ 21 max), excluding Sprint which from my understanding doesn't even have a HSPA+ pipeline.

So why would I consider buying this phone if I was on any other carrier besides T-Mobile? Or is this phone only being offered on T-Mobile and no other carriers?

I don't believe it works on Verizon or Sprint at all, as it's a GSM phone and those are CDMA carriers. It's offered direct from Google with no contract ($350), or from T-Mobile ($200 with a contract, $550 without).

As for why you'd buy it for use on the only other big GSM carrier in the states (AT&T), I guess it's whether you value a Google-branded phone over faster internet. My current phone tops out at 3G, and I don't use it for browsing and such that often, so I really don't care that much how fast beyond that it goes. If I was on AT&T, I'd consider it.

Intel does the same thing. There is no single chip you can buy that has every available feature in the silicon enabled. The multiplier unlocked ones are missing virtualization and management features in the Xeons and of course the Xeons have limited multipliers. It is much cheaper to design a chip with extra features selectively disabled than to design many permutations of the chip with different features.

As far as I understand, they can't do a universal LTE phone, because it would require different chipset for each carrier.Moreover, since Google wants to stay carrier free, having a different model for each carrier would entirely nullify that goal.As far as I am aware, it is simply impossible for Google to have a single phone that would work on every carrier LTE, so there's no point on beeing angered over that.

"Infuriating"? Really? People are buying devices that are advertised as *not* LTE, then driven to FURY by the fact that there is a chip inside that could, in theory provide LTE, if it were combined with a few other parts that are *not* inside.

I think people must have a low fury threshold, or, maybe this is hype.

No. People decided not to buy the device because it has no LTE.

And now they're furious, because they found out an otherwise excellent product just needs a "signal amplifier and filter" and it would have LTE.

This should be the best android phone money can buy. But that is cut short by having ridiculously small flash memory and no LTE, both of which can be fixed for a few dollars if done as part of manufacturing.

I just did the math and pay 2.8% of my gross as premiums for me plus my mini-me.

Do you know how much your company is paying for your healthcare? The cost of your healthcare is far higher than the amount deducted from your paycheck. You still pay for it, but you never see those dollars in the first place.

I know there's another cost in there, but the comparison is between individual tax rates in the two companies. If you're going to argue that Canadians get a higher gross income for a given loaded cost because employers don't pay for benefits, and therefore the higher tax rate difference evens out, you're welcome to cite and do the math, but I'm not interested enough.

And now they're furious, because they found out an otherwise excellent product just needs a "signal amplifier and filter" and it would have LTE.

This should be the best android phone money can buy. But that is cut short by having ridiculously small flash memory and no LTE, both of which can be fixed for a few dollars if done as part of manufacturing.

You're sure those SoC parts all include paid-up LTE patent licenses in the cost, regardless of whether the features are used or not? Because I would be surprised if they did. And that's ignoring the differing LTE frequency issues as well.

Edit: Also, a phone that retails for half the price of something like the S3 is not going to be "the best Android phone money can buy." You appear to be pissed that Google is targeting a different segment of the market, which is not all that reasonable IMO.

Of the four major US carriers, only T-Mobile is HSPA+ 42 capable allowing the phone to reach 4G speeds rivaling LTE.?

My phone and carrier both support LTE and 48Mbps HSPA+.

In my (small/regional) city, LTE is only available in the CBD. I can tell you right now, that while HSPA+ is plenty fast, it doesn't hold a candle to LTE.

I consistently get between 2.5 and 5 megabytes per second and very low latency when I'm on the LTE network. When I'm using "48Mbps" HSPA+ I always have very high latency and bandwidth fluctuates between 100 kilobytes and 1.5 megabytes per second.

In real world use, 3G is equivalent to a low end DSL connection except with horrible latency — compared to LTE which has better bandwidth than any DSL connection I've ever used and the latency is about the same as DSL.

You're sure those SoC parts all include paid-up LTE patent licenses in the cost, regardless of whether the features are used or not? Because I would be surprised if they did. And that's ignoring the differing LTE frequency issues as well.

Patents aren't that expensive. I'm sure customers would gladly pay the increased price. I doubt it's more than $1 per unit, and even if it was $50 I'd still pay it (especially subsidised over a 24 month contract).

another ars account wrote:

Edit: Also, a phone that retails for half the price of something like the S3 is not going to be "the best Android phone money can buy." You appear to be pissed that Google is targeting a different segment of the market, which is not all that reasonable IMO.

Yeah, it retails for half the price. I think they did that by cutting costs in places where they should not have.

The CPU and RAM and display are as good or better than the S3. There is a market for low end phones, but this is a very high end phone with a couple of basic (and cheap) features cut out. Also, I'm not personally pissed.

I have never owned an android phone and don't intend to any time soon (although I might buy that E-Ink prototype phone I saw the other day, if it ever ships).

I have no stake in this, I'm just posting my observations because I think it's an interesting discussion. As an engineer myself (software mind you) I don't understand why they made the choices they did. I would love to hear someone else give a good reason why.

The only explanation I can come up with, is they don't intend this to sell very well. Perhaps it's just intended to show off what an android device *could* be, and they might even be loosing money on each device. It seems like the only geeks who would really love this phone are those who choose it as a secondary device that rarely leaves WiFi — where LTE isn't used and you can stream media instead of storing it locally.